StairMed's brain-implant bet: China's first invasive BCI trial, then Alibaba's ¥500M

Develops minimally invasive implantable brain-computer interfaces: ultra-flexible electrodes plus a wireless skull implant that lets paralyzed patients control computers and devices with thought.

That a minimally invasive, ultra-flexible wireless brain implant could win China's BCI race — with clinical validation first, then consumer and human-AI applications.

¥350M (~$48.5M) Series B in February 2025; ¥500M (~$72.5M) strategic round in March 2026 led by Alibaba with Tencent, Qiming, Lilly Asia and others; ~¥1.1B total in the prior 12 months (36Kr).

Founded in 2021 in Shanghai's Pudong district. The cofounders set out to make BCI eventually consumer-grade, deliberately starting with medical applications as the validation path, and built a 2,000-square-meter production facility including clean rooms.

On 25 March 2025, a quadruple amputee was implanted at Fudan University's Huashan Hospital in China's first invasive BCI first-in-human trial; within a month the patient controlled chess and racing games at near-able-bodied speed. In December 2025 StairMed released the WRS02, a 256-channel high-throughput wireless system, and in early 2026 it completed the system's first clinical implant using its own surgical robot. The company also said it is China's second BCI firm globally, after Neuralink, to reach the clinical stage.

Scaling toward registration: in 2026 StairMed plans a multicenter registration clinical trial of about 40 patients, with market entry targeted around 2028 pending regulatory approval. The Alibaba-led round funds the clinical program and R&D across motion control and speech reconstruction.

Clinical proof came first: China's first invasive BCI first-in-human trial gave StairMed credibility no amount of demos could buy.

A minimally invasive design (3–5 mm skull perforation, wireless skull implant) lowers the regulatory and ethical barriers that slow rivals.

Strategic capital from Alibaba and Tencent connects BCI hardware to the AI compute and models needed for decoding, and signals China's industrial push into BCI.

The roadmap from medical rehabilitation to speech reconstruction to consumer interfaces gives investors a path beyond one disease market.

In high-stakes medical hardware, the least invasive acceptable design can be the wedge: it won the first clinical trial, then the funding.

As of 02 September 2026, StairMed is running toward registration: it plans a multicenter registration clinical trial of roughly 40 patients in 2026, funded by the Alibaba-led ¥500M round, with WRS02 covering motion control and speech-reconstruction use cases. The first trial participant continues to use the implant for day-to-day computer control, and the company's stated market entry is around 2028 pending regulatory approval.